You never had a hard time getting a good cheeseburger in Superior. The two best burgers on Earth hail from there, after all. Whether Number One in that struggle is Gronk’s or the Anchor Bar will always depend on who you ask (Me? Gronk’s); but what if I told you Superior is also home to a smoked beef sandwich that can an eater for years? What if I said you could have it with a 92-ounce serving of Spotted Cow?

Well, if you know Superior, that part won’t likely surprise you.

Anyhow: I wouldn’t exactly call Shorty’s Pizza and Smoked Meat a hidden gem. Guy Fieri’s been there, and there’s a big ol’ banner on the side of the building with his big ol’ face on it. It’s no less a gem, though. As it approaches four years on Tower Avenue, Shorty’s offers an experience you can’t otherwise have on either side of the Blatnik Bridge. If you enjoy an edible thrill ride, you’ll want the dangerlicious Inferno sandwich. If you just want a magnificent pile of meat, they’ve got ’em all over the menu. Pick one.

If you get it like I’ve gotten it, that meal will stay in your head and make your mouth water until you come back for another, even if it takes months.

The Basics: If everything the Internet says is true (and who’d ever doubt that), Shorty’s Pizza and Smoked Meat is a Packers bar with Montreal-inspired food that was opened by a Canadian Duluthian man. There may or may not have been Canadian Lottery winnings involved. What we do know is owner Brian Noel has found success in a building once perceived as a revolving door of bar failures. We might be safe saying the ghost of Carignan’s has finally been exorcised (and, for that matter, the ghosts of Odyssey’s, Hall of Fame, O2, Lord Stanley’s, etc. etc.).

On a bright day, stepping into the bar side of Shorty’s may look like walking into a closet at first. It’s dark, so much that your eyes may need time to adjust. Once they do, they’re treated to a “who’s who” of “WTF” on the walls. You’d think Noel had bought every light-up beer advertisement, and every Packers tin sign, from every garage sale in Douglas County. After those were all posted, the rest of the wall space was filled with a clown head, a shark head, disembodied buttocks, a barber’s pole, and a few Elvis things … to name a few. Have your phone camera ready, and good luck with your flash settings.

How thirsty are you? Draft beer is available in 16-and 20-ounce servings if you’re not really thirsty. If you’re really thirsty, the 50-ounce or the 92-ounce has you covered. Shorty’s also sells pitchers, for some reason. If you’re like me, you get a 50-ounce Spotted Cow and consider that “Peak Wisconsinite.” Then, you go play the arcade games built into the urinals. I’m not kidding. You direct your pee stream at certain spots and you play a game that way. I’m serious. Quit laughing. It’s fun.

The ordering process, for me, is simple. I make sure the Inferno is on the menu, and I order a jumbo. It’s a toasted hoagie, with a pinup-quality stack of food inside that the buns cannot properly close over: an embarrassment of smoked beef, littered with bacon, covered in pepperjack cheese and buffalo barbecue sauce. Did I mention the sliced jalapenos? They cover the bottom bun with sliced jalapenos. No, they don’t hold back – not on the meat, not on the heat, nothing. With this sandwich, safety is nobody’s job.

Yet, the fundamentals aren’t lost in the heat. It’s a robust sauce, and they lay it on thick. The meat is tender and spiced nicely. Anything you think they’re promising on the website, they deliver onto your plate. There could be more cheese, but I say that about everything.

My friend asked for a bite. When he tried it, let out an emphatic “Whoo!” and said, “You’ve gotta be ON to eat that thing.”

I’m always on. It’s a gift and a curse. I know I need to have the pizza sometime. I’d love to see what they can do with a simple pepperoni and sausage. I also know I should one day have the Shorty’s Special made with mustard, coleslaw, Swiss, and a fried egg. Guy Fieri knows to order “The Hunter’s Chicken.” I do, too, but I still get the Inferno.

It stays with me long after I leave Superior, every time. It’s wormed Shorty’s into the “Gronk’s or Thirsty Pagan” debate, which doesn’t really exist because I almost always hit both of those places every time I come to Superior. Stopping for an Inferno, too, is a non-debate now. You’re cheating yourself if you don’t do the same.

I’m not saying knock something off your list of to-dos in Superior. I’m just saying your list needs to be a little bit longer.

One of my favorite songs all-time is Murder by Death’s “I Came Around.” In it, the singer attends the wake of a man he’d long disliked. He thought he knew the man, branded him a crook. He takes that point of view into a night of drinking with the man’s friends, only to get ambushed by stories about how good the man really was. The singer discovers how wrong he’d been all this time … but it’s too late now, of course. The song ends with him weeping beside the man’s coffin.

Making up your mind and keeping it that way can be a dangerous game, indeed. Sometimes, you look back with no regrets whatsoever; other times, the regrets are grievous and irreconcilable. Somewhere in between, I’d guess right smack in the middle, are the 18 years I went between my first cheeseburger at Gordy’s Hi-Hat and my second.

Here’s how I came to that first fateful decision, and how I myself came around.

The Basics: The Gordy’s Hi-Hat of today is basically the same Gordy’s Hi-Hat that first opened its doors in 1960, there on Highway 33 just outside of Cloquet: black and white checkerboard floors, red shiny barstool seats, cartoon hamburger mascot, everything your mind assumes when you gaze into a grayscale burger joint photo. They only thing they haven’t got are the roller-skating windowside servers. I went on a Thursday, though. The skaters might have just had the night off.

Gordy’s, for their stature, makes a bigger deal than they need to about Guy Fieri having come by. If anyone needs to make a big deal about that, it’s Fieri.

Let us now spin back to Spring, ’99. I either just had or was about to graduate from Wrenshall High School. I stood 6-foot-1, weighed 165 pounds, and the width of my head hadn’t quite caught up to its height. I was a nobody back then. I don’t mean I was unpopular (though I wouldn’t say I was popular, either), but I was largely a blank space. I spent much of my junior year taking classes independently, and my senior year earning on-the-job credits at the Cloquet Journal, so I barely saw my classmates.In our yearbook, I was voted “Most Likely to Leave Town and Never Come Back.” Of the 31 kids in my graduating class, I ranked 16th academically – neither above nor below average for my class.

I didn’t date. I didn’t attend my senior prom. My parents gave me a number of “talkin’ tos” about how I should hang out with friends more. Meh. I hadn’t yet had a drop of alcohol in my life, and obviously I was a virgin. I was nearly unbeatable in NHL 95, though, and had by that point written two book-length stories. They were about me, as a superhero, defending earth from nefarious lizard people.

I only tell you this because this was the person who decided a Gordy’s Hi-Hat cheeseburger wasn’t “all that,” and there was no point returning.

That judgement stayed with me as I became old and stubborn. I passed by it probably 100 more times, without the slightest inkling to go in again. I’d see the packed parking lot and wonder how, why, they were that popular. When I moved to the Twin Cities, I saw writers down here gush over Gordy’s. I blew it off. They’re just being front-runners. They obviously don’t know where the real good spots are up there. And Guy Fieri showed up, because f*cking of course he did.

I got older, more stubborn, older and even more stubborn. Don’t ask my wife to confirm this, but I’m not entirely stubborn – least not yet – and I let up at a rather fortuitous time.

April 13, 2017: I had just eaten a cheeseburger an hour ago, and was rushing up to meet friends in Virginia, so why the hell am I suddenly stopping at Gordy’s?

Because there was a parking spot open right in front of the door, that’s why. With a “F*ck it” and a jerk of the steering wheel, I was on my way in.

I crept in. Had you seen me, you’d swear they were closed and I was coming in for the cash register. I don’t know why, I just did. I stepped carefully down a short hallway, turned to my left, and was stunned by the radiance of the ordering window. It was so big, and bright! Look at that red and white awning! There wasn’t even a line! I could just walk up and order! I was less than 20 miles from where I grew up, yet I felt lost.

A warm, polite greeting whizzed at me like a bullet. My eyes rushed back and forth, and found a markerboard sign: DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER, $3.99. I’ll have one to go, please.

I spoke with a formidable man at the counter. I don’t know how his name is spelled, but it was pronounced “SEE-ver.” He complimented my Bauhaus Brew Labs hoodie, said he lived in Northeast until recently, and asked how I knew the Bauhaus people so well. I told him, and gave him a card. He seemed genuinely interested. His handshake was formidable, too. An exemplary gentleman, “SEE-ver.”

My order came out so quickly, I initially denied it was mine. They asked what I ordered, I told them, they confirmed, and I accepted the bag. I’d only been there four or five minutes, but I already had my order and I’d already met someone. The whole incident felt as if I’d been sitting for a long time and stood up too quickly, but in a very good way.

The plan was to save my cheeseburger for the next day, but the plan was also to be happy with my Hinckley Hardee’s ritual burger from an hour before and the plan was to be in Virginia ’round 9 p.m. I’m no better at planning than I was 18 years ago.

I needed at least one bite while it was still warm. One hand on the wheel, I fumbled the bag open, fumbled the Styrofoam container out of the bag, fumbled the top off the container, and was nearly put in the ditch by how gorgeous this cheeseburger was.

I had to photograph it. Now. I panicked about this. I had no surface. The sunset was going to make lighting a nightmare. The fact I was driving was going to make a good setup nearly impossible. I didn’t care. I’d figure it out. One hand on the wheel, I yanked the dog blanket up from the back seat, wiped the dust off my dashboard with it, positioned the cheeseburger bare-bun on my dashboard, re-positioned it until I had the best angle, and sped toward an acceptable backdrop.

Look at it. I swear there were eight slices of cheese. The beef patties showed a hint of pink and bit smoothly, like Cooper Pub’s Vincent Burger. The onion bits were locked in between the patties and glued down by cheese. Only two or three fell off, total. Pickles, ketchup and mustard was portioned properly and applied just so. Whoever is leading those cooks knows how a burger ought to be made. “Having one bite” became “having one.”

It was emotional, to the extent eating a cheeseburger while driving can be emotional. Did I mourn the 18 years I could’ve spent enjoying burgers like this one? A little. Did I bemoan the years I’d spent stopping at Hardee’s – Hardee’s! – for cheeseburgers over Gordy’s when driving up north? A little. Not that Hardee’s is bad, I like Hardee’s, but come on! And can you believe this cheeseburger was less expensive than the ones I usually got at Hardee’s?

Mostly, though, I was happy for whatever impulse got me into that parking spot to begin with. I might have never gone back. Thinking about that now frightens me some. What Garland said, it’s true. What they say about Gordy’s, it’s all true.

I didn’t come around too late, thank goodness. Gordy’s didn’t burn down. I didn’t die or move too far away. I can’t get those 18 years back, but I’ve got the rest of my life and you’d better believe I can eat an extra 18 years’ worth.

The void left by Gordy’s Hi-Hat all these years will be filled, as it should always have been, by Gordy’s Hi-Hat.